Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) are agreements between a governmental body, whether it be the federal government, a state government, or a local government, and one or more labor unions that gives the unions the ability to collectively bargain for wages and benefits for workers on a publicly-funded project, such as road construction or construction of government buildings.

In Glen Carbon, Illinois, a coal mining community-turned-St. Louis, Missouri suburb in Madison County, Illinois, workers had to fight for their right to a PLA after anti-union forces tried to repeal an ordinance authorizing PLAs not long after the original ordinance was enacted.

On June 9th of this year, the Glen Carbon village board (Glen Carbon is legally incorporated as a village under Illinois law) voted to require PLAs on village construction projects by a 4-2 vote, despite the fact that the village president, Rob Jackstadt, has publicly opposed PLAs. Jackstadt responded to the vote for PLAs for scheduling a vote to repeal the pro-PLA ordinance for July 14, and that’s when the unions showed up before the Glen Carbon village board to tout the benefits of PLAs.

The unions’ primary argument in favor of PLAs was that they prevent labor stoppages from delaying work on public projects. Mark Johnson, the president of Operating Engineers Local 520, cited an example of union workers working without a PLA on a private-sector construction project (specifically, a Sam’s Club bulk-item store in Edwardsville) in his defense of PLAs:

You’re looking at 11 labor agreements trying to function on the same job site…It works, but it doesn’t work as well as these PLAs do. Instead of 11 agreements, you have one blanket agreement covering everybody.

Another argument that the unions used in defense of PLAs is that workers on projects covered by a PLA are paid more than non-union workers in the same type of work. Raymond Hunt, an ironworker from Glen Carbon, said this before his hometown’s village board:

The unions are the best thing going…They take care of their people. The non-union people – they work for nothing. They can be fired in a second. If the boss doesn’t like what they’re doing, doesn’t like them personally, they just get rid of them. I’ve seen a lot of it happen. The union people are dedicated and do a good job.

Only two people showed up at the Glen Carbon village board meeting to argue the anti-PLA position. One of them, Jamie Wilkinson, was an official of some kind for Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC), a trade association that has backed Republican politicians and publicly opposed union construction. Wilkinson publicly dissed union workers by saying that he thought that they were not the only qualified labor force.

Thanks in no small part to the brilliant campaign waged by unions and union workers to keep PLAs in Glen Carbon, the Glen Carbon village board voted 4-2 to keep the pro-PLA ordinance they had enacted a little more than a month earlier on the books. PLAs result in fewer workplace disputes and put more take-home pay in the pockets of hard-working workers.

The Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Assembly voted to give millions of dollars taxpayer money from ordinary Wisconsinites the owners of professional basketball’s Milwaukee Bucks in order for them to build a new arena by a 52-34 vote, with 5 members not voting at all, 4 members casting paired votes in favor, and 4 members casting paired votes in opposition.

Here’s the Wisconsin State Assembly members who voted for the Milwaukee Bucks corporate welfare giveaway:

Scott Allen (R)

Joan Ballweg (R)

Peter Barca (D Minority Leader)

Mandela Barnes (D)

Janel Brandtjen (R)

Robert Brooks (R)

Bob Gannon (R)

Evan Goyke (D)

Gordon Hintz (D)

Rob Hutton (R)

John Jagler (R)

Adam Jarchow (R)

La Tonya Johnson (D)

Andy Jorgensen (D)

Robb Kahl (D)

Terry Katsma (R)

Samantha Kerkman (R)

Frederick Kessler (D)

Joel Kleefisch (R)

Dan Knodl (R)

Dale Kooyenga (R)

Jesse Kremer (R)

Mike Kuglitsch (R)

Tom Larson (R)

Amy Loudenbeck (R)

Cory Mason (D)

Jeffrey Mursau (R)

John Murtha (R)

John Nygren (R)

Alvin Ott (R)

Jim Ott (R)

Kevin David Petersen (R)

Warren Petryk (R)

Jessie Rodriguez (R)

Dana Rohrkaste (R)

Joe Sanfelippo (R)

Michael Schraa (R)

Christine Sinicki (D)

Ed Skowronski (R)

John Spiros (R)

Mark Spreitzer (D)

Jim Steineke (R)

Lisa Subeck (D)

Rob Swearingen (R)

Paul Tittl (R)

Tyler Vorpagel (R)

Robin Vos (R Speaker)

Dana Wachs (D)

Leon Young (D)

JoCasta Zamarippa (D)

Josh Zepnick (D)

In addition to those, Mark Born (R), Dianne Hesselbein (D), Bob Kulp (R), and Tom Weatherston (R) cast paired votes in favor of the Milwaukee Bucks corporate welfare deal. However, under Wisconsin Assembly rules, paired votes, which can only be recorded if members casting the paired votes have an excused absence, do not officially count as votes in favor or in opposition to legislation, but are officially recorded as paired votes in the official vote tally. Personally, I think the paired votes rule should be repealed in any jurisdiction that allows paired votes, since it seems like a relic of the pre-automobile era, when it was very difficult for a state legislator who lived a long distance from the capital city of a particular state to get to the state capitol building.

While proponents of the deal have claimed that the deal will pay for itself over time, the fact of the matter is that the deal would certainly not pay for itself. Over a 20-year period, the State of Wisconsin will pay $3.5 million annually to the Bucks, which will play 41 games per year (not counting any preseason or postseason games) in the new arena, starting with the 2017-2018 NBA season. It would require the Bucks to have an average home game attendance of 170,732 or greater to make up for the money that the state gave the Bucks owners to build the arena through the 50¢ cut of a $2/ticket surtax that the state receives. Since the maximum spectator capacity of the arena is going to be roughly somewhere between one-tenth and one-eighth of the break-even attendance figure of 170,732, it’s absolutely unrealistic to expect the state portion of deal to pay for itself over time.

By the way, here’s how I calculated the 170,732 figure for determining break-even attendance for the state portion of the deal:

There are 41 home regular season games for each of the 30 NBA teams, including the Bucks

The portion of the Bucks ticket surtax that the state receives is 50¢/ticket

3,500,000/41/0.5=170,732, rounded up to nearest whole number

In fact, if one were to factor in every revenue and expenditure factor of the deal, such as any tax revenue created or saved by the Bucks deal and the costs that taxpayers in Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee are on the hook for, the break-even attendance figure for the entire Bucks deal would probably still be more than any reasonable estimate of the maximum spectator capacity of the new arena. This is for two reasons. First, the portion of the money going to the Bucks owners that Milwaukee County and City of Milwaukee taxpayers are going to be on the hook for is in the low nine-figures. Second, there isn’t a ton of tax revenue that will be created or saved by the deal due to a large number of tax exemptions associated with the deal. To put all of that another way, the deal isn’t going to pay for itself. Even if the state portion of the deal repays itself and them some, it would still short Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee a large amount of taxpayer money that could have been better used for local government services that serve a public purpose and that Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee are legally responsible for.

I would never vote for an overt racist like Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but I will say one favorable thing about Trump: He’s far better at attacking Scott Walker than most Democrats in Walker’s home state of Wisconsin:

He went down a list of criticisms that seemed the result of an overnight opposition-research effort. “Wisconsin is doing terribly,’’ he said. “The roads are a disaster because they don’t have any money to rebuild them, and they’re borrowing money like crazy.’’

He cited figures for the state’s budget deficit. “I wrote this stuff all down but I don’t need it because I have a really good memory,” he said.

He also accused Mr. Walker of flip-flopping on the Common Core education standards, having once supported them. “Scott Walker changed when he saw he was getting creamed, so now he’s not in favor,’’ he said.

While I am a Bernie Sanders supporter, I disagree with Bernie’s support for Common Core; in fact, it’s one of only a few issues where I disagree with Bernie. I don’t like the idea of wealthy people like Bill Gates determining every state and school district’s curriculum and academic standards.

Anyways, back to the main subject of this blog post…while Trump is a blowhard and a half, he’s right when it comes to how awful Scott Walker’s far-right agenda has been for Wisconsin.

However, trying to find Democrats in Wisconsin who are even half as effective as Trump when it comes to attacking Walker is like trying to find a tennis racket at a golf pro shop. Most Democrats in Wisconsin tend to focus on only a few issues like reproductive rights and student loan reform, and they usually try to sound as nice and moderate as possible. When most Wisconsin Democrats criticize Walker, they usually come across as weak, tepid, defensive, too mild-mannered, and appeasing toward Republicans. There are a few exceptions to this, mostly Democratic/progressive elected officials from the Madison area and many progressive activists throughout Wisconsin.

Additionally, Trump’s far-right agenda isn’t much different, if any different at all, than Walker’s far-right agenda or the far-right agendas of the other Republican presidential candidates. For Trump to enact his political agenda nationwide would likely be as bad, if not worse, than Walker’s agenda has been for Wisconsin.

Trump’s rise in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination has prompted Walker’s supporters to get really desperate, even using left-wing attack lines of their own against Trump:

A fundraiser for Scott Walker’s presidential campaign called Donald Trump “DumbDumb” in a fundraising invitation and said electing the New York developer would be “a total and complete disaster for the country.”

“As you’ve seen Gov Walker is now well ahead of everyone not named DumbDumb (aka Trump) in the national polls,” wrote Walker fundraiser Gregory Slayton, a New Hampshire venture capitalist who served as consul general to Bermuda during the George W. Bush administration. “He’s also a plain spoken member of the 99% (as opposed to someone pretending to be so)…and that will be a (key success factor) in 2016.”

Walker may not be a member of the 1%, but his policies benefit the 1% and virtually nobody else. Electing Trump, Walker, or any other right-wing Republican to the White House would be an unmitigated disaster for this country…Wisconsin has basically been a lavatory (pun intended) for a far-right political agenda for the last four and a half years, and it’s been an absolute disaster there.

Chris “Capper” Liebenthal has an excellent post about Trump’s attacks against Walker here.

An amendment to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), a federal corporate welfare agency that primarily provides taxpayer money to a single large corporation (Boeing, an airplane manufacturer), was successfully added to legislation designed to allow more employers to refuse to provide health insurance to their employees by a 67-26 vote. Not a single Democrat voted against the amendment, although three members of the Senate Democratic Caucus (Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Chris Coons of Delaware, and Ed Markey of Massachusetts) did not vote on the amendment.

I find it disgusting that nearly the entire Senate Democratic Caucus would support corporate welfare for Boeing.

The Export-Import Bank, initially created by a Franklin Delano Roosevelt executive order as part of his New Deal agenda, is an export credit agency that primarily provides loan guarantees to Boeing. In fact, in 2012, 82.7% of Ex-Im’s loan guarantees went to Boeing. If Ex-Im doesn’t provide taxpayer money to companies without requiring that all of the money given out be paid back over a certain period of time, then Ex-Im is technically not corporate welfare. However, Ex-Im is effectively corporate welfare, since its operations primarily benefit a single company.

I would only support reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank if it would merely serve as a currency exchange for foreign firms who trade with the United States.

The arena’s estimated lifespan is 30 years, after which, the Bucks owners would be demanding more taxpayer money for yet another new arena once again if they get the deal for the arena they intend to build over the next couple of years.

The deal includes a ton of tax exemptions that would severely restrict the amount of tax revenue that could be generated by the deal, resulting in less tax revenue being available for roads, schools, and other things that serve a public purpose.

Marquette University’s basketball team would likely be a regular tenant of the arena, in possible violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The deal includes the creation of a special “entertainment district”, which would likely consist of mostly of national chain bars and restaurants, that is unsustainable and would likely drive local businesses in Milwaukee out of operation.

The new arena would be managed by a board consisting partially of elected officials who aren’t from the Milwaukee area and aren’t elected by Milwaukeeans, such as Jennifer Shilling (who is from La Crosse, located over 170 miles from Milwaukee), while completely shutting out the Milwaukee County Board from making any appointments to the board.

The deal would not restore one penny of funding that was taken from public schools, state parks, and other things that received budget cuts from Scott Walker’s state budget.

Given that the NBA has mandated that the Bucks either build a new arena in Milwaukee or move elsewhere before the start of the 2017-2018 NBA season, that would leave a roughly two-year window for the Bucks to build the arena, and any significant construction delays would result in the arena not being built on time, the Bucks being forced to move, and Milwaukee being stuck with an unfinished arena.

If a lot of opponents of the Milwaukee Bucks corporate welfare giveaway show up, you may be able to help sway Christine Sinicki to do the right thing and vote against the Bucks corporate welfare giveaway. Letting the Milwaukee Bucks move to Las Vegas (or some other city) would be, by far, the lesser of two evils compared to wasting more of Wisconsinites’ taxpayer money that would probably see little or no return on investment for taxpayers.

Ladies and gentlemen, we officially have a war on air conditioning in America.

Kate Murphy, a Houston, Texas-based journalist for The New York Times, recently wrote a column on air conditioning, in which she complained about indoor spaces that she thinks are too cold because of what she considers to be excessive air conditioning in places like offices, courtrooms, movie theaters, coffee shops, and department stores:

IT’S summertime. The season when you can write your name in the condensation on the windows at Starbucks, people pull on parkas to go to the movies and judges have been known to pause proceedings so bailiffs can escort jurors outside the courthouse to warm up.

On these, the hottest days of the year, office workers huddle under fleece blankets in their cubicles. Cold complaints trend on Twitter with posts like, “I could preserve dead bodies in the office it’s so cold in here.” And fashion and style bloggers offer advice for layered looks for coming in and out of the cold.

Why is America so over air-conditioned? It seems absurd, if not unconscionable, when you consider the money and energy wasted — not to mention the negative impact on the environment from the associated greenhouse-gas emissions. Architects, engineers, building owners and energy experts sigh with exasperation when asked for an explanation. They tick off a number of reasons — probably the most vexing is cultural.

[…]

Commercial real estate brokers and building managers say sophisticated tenants specify so-called chilling capacity in their lease agreements so they are guaranteed cold cachet. In retailing, luxury stores like Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue are kept colder than more down-market Target, Walmart and Old Navy. Whole Foods is chillier than Kroger, which is chillier than Piggly Wiggly.

While Murphy has a few valid points in her piece, such as wasted energy associated with air conditioning, greenhouse gas emissions associated with air conditioning, and luxury retailers using more air conditioning than low-end retailers (which is what I like to call chill inequality), I hate hot places and hot spaces with a passion. During the summer months here in the east-central part of Illinois, it can get extremely hot outside, and I would feel very uncomfortable for months on end without air conditioning. I have air conditioning in my bedroom, and that’s where I’m the most comfortable in the summer months. The only reason why I don’t set the temperature lower on my window air conditioner than I have it now (75°F) is because my parents would complain about me running up the power bill if I set the air conditioner temperature lower.

I’m shocked that a Texan like Kate Murphy would complain about air conditioning, given how excessively hot Texas can get during the summer months.

Although I’m an American, I’m offering my support to Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn (L-Islington North) in his bid to become the leader of the British Labour Party.

Corbyn, who would probably be an Elizabeth Warren-type Democrat if he were an American politician, has fought for progressive ideals on many issues in over three decades. Most recently, he was one of 47 Labour MPs to vote against Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron’s legislation to gut the British welfare system, despite the fact that the interim Labour leadership advised Corbyn and the rest of their MPs not to vote on the measure at all.

I have been proud to be a trade union rep, a trade union official, a local councillor and a Labour MP for the last 32 years. My purpose in every role has been to share that power, providing a platform to the voiceless, at home and abroad, and to stand up with them.

I am now asking for your support to become Labour leader. I want that role for the same reason – to work with you to right the many wrongs we see around us.

Our party must become a social movement again. It was founded to stand up to injustice, and too often we have lost our way, ignored our supporters or been cowed by powerful commercial interests and the press.

Austerity policies are harming people’s life chances and taking away opportunities. We must reject the notion that the journey to prosperity tramples over people – and become an anti-austerity movement. You can’t build a fair economy by casting people aside.

Corbyn’s campaign is gaining so much momentum, former British Prime Minister and George W. Bush crony Tony Blair is openly attacking Corbyn for standing up for poor and working-class Britons. Given that Blair was a staunch supporter of Britain’s involvement in the unjustified Iraq War, that makes me like Corbyn even more.

I managed to stumble upon a Federal Election Commission (FEC) list of campaign contributions to Hillary for America, the official Hillary Clinton presidential campaign committee, sorted by employer of the individual campaign donor (individual donor names were not listed, although donations came from individuals and not the corporations themselves). Roughly halfway down the list, I found that one or more individuals employed by an entity called Koch Companies Public Sector (KCPS) donated a total of $1,000 to the Hillary campaign. The list is based on the Hillary campaign’s July 2015 quarterly report to the FEC.

KCPS is an entity affiliated with Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by Charles and David Koch, commonly referred to as the Koch Brothers and notorious for bankrolling Republican politicians and right-wing political causes. Although I’m not 100% certain of this, KCPS appears to me to be a right-wing political organization affiliated with the Koch Brothers: they have issued press releases that are clearly political in nature and attack Democrats (example here) for opposing the Koch Brothers’ political agenda in the recent past. Additionally, KCPS has spent, if my calculation of data provided in a graph here is correct, $101,192,700, on lobbying federal legislators. I’ve not been able to find any information online regarding any non-political activity by KCPS.

Given that the $1,000 comes from one or more individuals employed by KCPS, it is possible that there is one or more individuals employed by KCPS who are not strongly supportive of the Koch Brothers’ political agenda. However, since KCPS appears to be a primarily political organization affiliated with the Koch Industries, I would be shocked if there was anybody who even remotely resembled a political moderate or liberal employed by KCPS. I could see someone working in, for example, a milling job for Georgia-Pacific being a Hillary donor, but the fact that one or more KCPS employees donated to Hillary leaves me two big questions: 1) Why exactly would one or more employees of an organization like KCPS donate money to a Democratic presidential candidate? 2) Does Hillary Clinton privately support at least part of the Koch Brothers’ right-wing political agenda?

Once again, a major political scandal is brewing in Wisconsin. This time, it involves loans given out to a company called Green Box NA by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), a corporate welfare agency in Wisconsin:

An indebted De Pere business owner will provide as detailed a list of assets and debtors to his former company’s court-appointed receiver within 10 days.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., Montreal-based Cliffton Equities Inc. and De Pere-area physician Dr. Marco Araujo sued Green Box NA and its president, Ronald Van Den Heuvel, on May 20 seeking repayment of more than $5.7 million in loans. They claim Green Box is near insolvency, worry it cannot cure its many defaults and suspect the company offered the same collateral to multiple financiers.

“Van Den Heuvel’s casual commingling of assets and collateral among his many entities gives rise to a real concern that he will dispose of plaintiff’s collateral improperly or that collateral may not exist,” the plaintiffs’ initial complaint states.

Green Box NA received nearly $1.2 million in taxpayer-funded awards from the WEDC, including a $1.1 million loan and a $95,500 job training grant. Green Box NA has not made any payments on its loan since 2013, and the WEDC officially declared Green Box NA to be in default earlier this year. Green Box NA claims to be a sustainable energy company, but, in reality, it’s actually a waste gasification scheme.

Let’s not forget that:

Republican Wisconsin Governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker chaired the WEDC’s board at the time Green Box received the awards (Walker is no longer the WEDC board chairman)

Walker and Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature created the WEDC in 2011

Green Box NA received a $1.1 million loan mere months after the WEDC was created by Wisconsin Republicans in 2011

Ron Van Den Heuvel, Green Box NA, and multiple other Van Den Heuvel companies have faced multiple civil lawsuits over, among other things, failure to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes and failure to pay both public and private creditors. Now, there’s apparently criminal proceedings into the Van Den Heuvel/Green Box NA ripoff of Wisconsin taxpayers. This could have all been prevented if it weren’t for the WEDC giving out corporate welfare to businesses, and doing a downright horrible job at it.

Oneida Eye has very detailed blog posts about Ron Van Den Heuvel’s long track record of financial troubles, legal troubles, and ripping off taxpayers here and here. They’ve been publishing great blog posts on the Green Box NA scandal for quite some time.

Sure, her body can produce children, care for children, cook, and clean, but her body can do far more things. Her body can walk, run, jump, swim, dive, dance, sail, play sports, coach athletes, lift weights, paddle boats, ride bicycles, ride motorcycles, and drive automobiles. Her body can write, draw, paint, take pictures, film, record videos, produce radio programs, produce television programs, sing, play musical instruments, talk, act, tell jokes, study, think, and teach. Her body can invent, explore the world, explore the universe, conduct experiments, preserve species, solve math problems, care for the injured, care for the ill, care for the disabled, and use technology. Her body can work jobs, own businesses, run businesses, run non-profit groups, advise people, manufacture things, build houses, build buildings, build infrastructure, farm, ranch, sell insurance, sell homes, and trade financial instruments. Her body can vote, participate in democracy, fight for democracy, fight for her rights, fight for the rights of others, serve in an armed force, work for government agencies, run government agencies, make laws, interpret laws, enforce laws, represent plaintiffs, represent defendants, lead communities, lead regions, lead nations, and lead the world. Her body can date, marry, love men, and love women. Her body can become his body, and his body can become her body. Her body can do many other things as well.

This is why I support progressive policies that value her and her body. I support requiring equal pay for equal work. I support requiring paid family, medical, and maternity leave. I support raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. I support protecting and expanding her right to determine what kind of health care she wants for her body, including what kind of reproductive health care she wants for her body. I support prohibiting all forms of discrimination. I support universal health care, so that she can afford the kind of health care she wants for her body. I support many other progressive policies that value her and her body.